Bell Bridge Books

   A LITTLE TRUE LOVE AT CHRISTMASTIME

by: Heidi Sprouse

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas and I have one of the best presents coming up right now…the release of my first novel, All the Little Things.  I’ve been plugging away for ten years now, dreaming big, and can’t wait to share this with friends, family, and readers that I hope will fall in love with my characters the way I do every time we meet again. More is on the way, but right now it’s time to get to know Sam, Meg, and all of the little things that matter most when it comes to love!

Have you ever wished you could find your true soul mate, someone who knows you better than you know yourself? A man who doesn’t want anything else but to be at your side? Sam O’Malley is that man and he fell in love with Megan Taylor the moment he laid eyes on her. Maybe he was only 10-years-old, but the 8-year-old girl literally swept him off his feet and sent him for a freefall out of a tree the day she moved into the neighborhood.

Twenty years later, this small town boy has become a successful architect, knows what direction he’s headed, and doesn’t want anything more than what he’s found in Meg. There’s only one problem. The girl has begun to question her life and it will be up to Sam to pull out all of the stops, digging up memories, and leaving no stone unturned in their past to try and change her mind.

I’m a small town girl myself and many of the things that are precious to Sam and Megan come from my own childhood and life, moments that will be locked in my heart forever. As for a man like Sam, he’s of the solid, reliable sort any woman would love and has many of the qualities of the greats I’ve known over the years. I hope you’ll like him as much as I do, cheer him on, and stick it out to see what happens. If you love Sam, just wait until you get tangled with his best friend, Michael, and a hot-blooded Italian, Sophia, in Lightning Can Strike Twice (coming soon!).

Grab Heidi’s novel – ALL THE LITTLE THINGS – out TODAY! 

I KNOW ENOUGH TO BE DANGEROUS

By Donnell Ann Bell

Whenever I sit down with my husband to watch Jeopardy, and a writer is one of the three contestants, my Dear Husband automatically says, the writer will win, he/she’s smart.  I sit back and think, maybe.  He might be a descendant of Einstein’s, a Harvard graduate, incredibly well read, or he might be like me –he gets this crazy idea that won’t let go, and has to finish it so his head won’t explode.

Being thought of as the owner of a high IQ is much more glamorous so I smile and remain quiet.  Still, just between you, me and the blogosphere, writers answer to their muse, and, sadly, that muse often takes them in a direction writers don’t want to go.

My muse couldn’t care less about the amount of work I have to do or the fear involved when I write a character.  What do you mean you think my protagonist needs to be a nuclear physicist?  I know nothing about nuclear physicists.  Do you know how much researching and interviewing that occupation will entail?

I’ll subtly insert, say, a janitor when my muse isn’t looking.  I can write a janitor.  To which she’ll cross her arms, lift an eyebrow (my muse has eyebrows) and say, I distinctly ordered a MIT-caliber character—write one.

In BETRAYED, my November release from Bell Bridge Books, my characters consist of a trap shooting champion, a world class soccer player, a cop with a masters in psychology,  an Ob-GYN, artists dealing with glass, iron and paint disciplines, and several others who would do so much better on Jeopardy than me.  You would think my muse would be satisfied with the amount of research I had to put into this book. Not even close.  She’s already moved on to my next work in progress.

Maybe writers are like me and try out for Jeopardy to hide from their muses.  Anyone have Alex Trebeck’s contact information?  The next time you see one on a game show, don’t fall for that ‘they must be smart’ routine.  The truth is if writers are doing something besides writing, they’re avoiding their muses.  Writers – most know enough to be dangerous.

Click on the covers to check out Donnell Ann Bell’s “dangerous” novels – DEADLY RECALL and THE PAST CAME HUNTING!

And don’t miss out on BETRAYED.  Out TODAY!

    ASHEVILLE – THE SETTING OF THE CROSSROADS CAFE NOVELLAS

by: Deborah Smith

My Inspiration . . .

He was a little guy, thin inside baggy thrift-store clothes, grubby-looking, with ear-flaps flapping on his cap as he walk-loped up theAshevillesidewalk toward my husband and me. It was nine a.m. on an autumn Saturday, bright and sunny and blue-skied, and we were headed up and down the hilly city streets toward eggs and soy sausage at Tupelo Honey’s.

We could see his lips moving as he came closer, but we couldn’t hear what he was saying and, even if we could read lips, we couldn’t see his. He held a ratty Teddy Bear in front of his face. A big one. We weren’t sure how he saw around it.

He never paused, never glanced our way, never stopped whispering to his bear. He and his secret friend passed by us and continued up the hill, two pals communing inside the mysteries of their minds.

Just another moment in theNorth Carolinacity where the favorite t-shirt slogans include “Why be normal?” and “It’s not weird, it’sAsheville.”

Of course every city has its share of citizens who live in alternate realities. But here, in this artsy-bohemian  informal capital of westernNorth Carolina(the mountain side of the state) “alternate”   is  square one  on the yellow brick road to everywhere.

“There’s the nun,”  someone says, as a guy in a habit flies by on a tall bicycle, hairy knees pumping as he dodges pedestrians and halloooos at the street performers. The flying bicycle nun can only mean one thing: the purple LaZoom comedy tour bus is coming.  It rolls by, a comedy routine in motion, the passengers wearing bizarre hats.

Hardly anyone gives it an astonished look.

Over inPritchardParkpeople are smoking roll-your-owns and playing chess at the granite chess tables; on Friday evenings dozens of drummers show up with djembes and rattles, bongos and small drums. The drumming is loud and primitive and exciting.  A lot of very bad stomp-dancing commences, mostly by white people, though the crowd is always diverse.   Kids run in circles, laughing.  Young women in peasant skirts roll their waist-bands down and  belly dance.

Hank enjoys that part. Go figure.

On my latest birthday I decided I wanted my ears pierced. Hank and I can’t agree that I should  get a tattoo – I keep working on that plan, but the ear piercings are the first baby steps toward my Wild Cronehood Transition, so far.

I come from the kind of southern family where one hole in each ear was the maximum; and that was only acceptable after about 1975 (among the Methodists;) not until the late 1980’s among the Southern Baptists.  I was raised among a wild branch of semi-Methodists, so Daddy pierced my ears early,in the late 1960’s, using a large sewing needle and a tray of ice cubes to numb the lobes.

It was great family entertainment. Sister, mother, and grandma gathered to watch. No one fainted, and a good time was had by all.

So I came from a streak of rebellion. I got a second set of piercings in my lobes some years ago. Wild stuff. Made family reunions a little tense. Look at her. Four holes!

And now. Well. I was going to hell. I was taking my piercings outside the realm    of all decent folk.

I was going above the lobes.

So Hank and I walked into anAshevilletattoo  parlor (the optimum place to get a professional piercing done, according to the multi-pierced college students at our hometown pub.)

The staff and clientele looked at us as if we might have wandered in by mistake, intending to enter the Oldies But Goodies Vinyl Records Collectibles Shop next door. I explained that I wanted a piercing in each ear.

The young man behind the counter decided to humor me and asked where? I pointed vaguely to my ears. Somewhere in there. And on the edge over there.

This is when he gets out the chart. The ear anatomy chart.

We go over more terms than a high school human physiology class.

Helix, triangular fossa, crus helix, tragus.

Tragus. I ask if that isn’t the time travel thingie in Dr. Who?

Hank sits down in a corner and hides behind his cell phone.

No, the tragus is that thick ridge that guards the entrance to your ear canal.

Okay, that would be a prominent display spot for a glittery semi-precious stud. Very cool.

“I’ve got a pierced tragus. Want to see my tragus?”

I like the sound of that.

On to the other ear. Helix. The outer fold. Soft and fleshy. “That looks like a good spot. Not much cartilage. Won’t hurt, right?”

“Not much,” the child-man behind the counter says.

He said something similar about the tragus.

Actually he said, “Not too bad.”

Next to me, a young child of twenty or so, dotted with a lot of metal already, says, “Hey, you  oughta try this. She points to her ear. Inside, upper half. A stud gleams on a  shallow mound that looks as if it would be very hard to maneuver a needle through. My stomach felt funny. I looked  at the ear chart.

The antihelix.

That sounded . . . anti. Not for me.

I paid, I signed papers, I swore I wasn’t underage, high or drunk, and I showed my driver’s license. I was disappointed when I found out all the pretty studs on display in the jewelry cases were forbidden for a piercing process. I had to go full-titanium pre-sterilized. This was some serious stabby work.

“Come on back here,” said a reincarnation of John Belushi, covered in tattoos and a beard, and wearing inch-wide ear-plugs in his lobes.

This is how men think they’re proving they could give birth if they had to.

John took me into a very doctorly room with sterilizers and cabinets and an exam table with sanitary paper on it. He had nearly twenty years of experience piercing everything that can be pierced on the human body, and when he realized I was happy to hear the gory details, (writers ask questions, and former  newspaper reporters ask a LOT of them) he merrily told me.

I began making a mental list of the anecdotes I would not be sharing with Hank.  A lot of men don’t like hearing stories about needles going through that down there.    

“Ready?” John said, his Latexed fingers holding a needle the size of a toothpick  next to my unsuspecting targus.

“Sure!”

When  your daddy stabbed your earlobes with Mama’s  largest sewing needle while your kid sister went “MAKE IT BLEED,” you’re  confident you can handle a steel toothpick through your targus.

Zap.

I said bad words. My eyes watered. It was over in three seconds. Maybe two. But still. Damn.

“You all right?” John asked.

“Sure!”

I was looking around for something sharp to cut him with if he picked up a second needle. Fortunately, he recognized the reaction. “The other side will be a piece of cake. You’re doing great. Didn’t you say you have a calico cat? Look, here’s a picture of my calico. She sleeps between me and my wife every night.”

He distracted me with photos of his kitty on his cell phone. The dull throbbing in my targus settled down. Okay, it was still attached. I took a deep breath. “Ready.”

“Good girl.”

He moved fast. Ready, set, aim. Ka-zap. My helix lost its virginity. Not so bad. John gave me instructions on saline cleansing. We shook hands. We’d bonded.

I swaggered out like a female pirate. A stud in my targus. A stud in my helix.

“Do I look hot, or what?” I asked Hank.
“Pale, really pale,” he said.
“I need wine. A lot of it.”

He took me by the arm and we wandered out into the sunshine.

Ashevillesurrounded me. I was one with the weirdness. Proudly alternative.

But a little wobbly.

I wanted a Teddy Bear to talk to.

CHECK OUT ALL OF DEBORAH SMITH’S BOOKS ON AMAZON NOW!! 

AND DON’T MISS THE PICKLE QUEEN OUT TODAY!!!!

JUST CLICK THE PICTURES!!

                               WRITING FOR FUN

by: Trish Jensen

I admit it, I’m a zone person. There are days when writing feels like a chore, and there are days when I get into the zone when things just seem to flow.

This was a zone book. It flowed, and I was annoyed when anyone interrupted that flow, including family.

Here was the excellent thing. I wrote a book totally out of my comfort zone. It was set in LA, where I’d never been, at a TV network, which I knew nothing about, and starred a producer (still nothing in my world) and a talented hair dresser (I barely know how to blow dry my hair correctly) who’s been recruited against her will to be the talent for a national makeover show.

She and I have nothing in common, as she’s tall and gorgeous and I’m short and “cute.”

One thing we had in common I could tap into is that we are both extremely shy, but can ratchet it up if someone annoys me. So in that way, I knew her. But Hollywood? A TV show? We both felt so out of our element.

Yet it was probably the most fun I’ve had writing a comedy. The two main characters zing each other at every opportunity.

The hero, AJ Landry is coerced into producing the show. He is not a happy dude. But as he gets to know Tanya Pierce, the talented makeover artist, and begins to realize she was so not out for fame and fortune, but instead was scared spitless at the thought of performing her craft for a national audience to witness, AJ becomes invested in her success and the success of the show.

The problem is, the only way he can eek any form of productivity out of her is to make her angry. So he shows up on the set, lists of insults in tow. Much as he hates her thinking he’s the biggest jerk in the universe, he knows it’s necessary to get any work done.

What a conundrum.  Unfortunately, his insults work to help her be so angry she forgets to be scared, and the result is a fabulous show that catches on fast with the public.

Now to try to get her to realize that he’s really not an ogre. Not having a great deal of success on that front. Or so he thinks.

Tanya can’t understand her attraction to the jerk, who never fails to remind her who’s the boss. Still, she does everything in her power to get him to fire her so she can head home to her small town and her shop. Instead, the man not only refuses to fire her, he starts threatening her with guest appearances on talk shows and at boat christenings.

Their animosity is palpable to everyone working on the set. They begin to call it “Zoning Tanya.”

And that is what Tanya and I have in common. We both need to be “zoned” to get work done. Now if I could only find my own AJ Landry to keep me in the zone.

Go check out ALL of Trish Jensen’s FABULOUS books now on Amazon!     

And DON’T FORGET to go grab her newest release BEHIND THE SCENES!!!

  YOU DON’T HAVE TO PET A RHINO ON HIS HORN

By H.W. Buzz Bernard

To some people it must seem like the Running of the Bulls–chasing tornadoes.

But it isn’t really.  In the Running of the Bulls, the beasts are pursuing you, not the other way around.  If you’re chasing storms, you’re doing just that; you’re the chaser, not the chasee.  You hold the advantage.

In fact, a year ago I would have told you that hot-footing it after twisters was probably safer than driving to work.  The big concern in the chasing community then wasn’t that someone would get an express pass to the Land of Oz, it was that someone would get turned into a Crispy Critter by lightning.

Then the tragic events of last spring occurred.  An experienced chaser and his crew, researchers no less, found themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time.  Attempting to outrun an EF-5 monster, they wound up directly in the path of a violent and exceptionally large (the largest on record) tornado near El Reno, Oklahoma, and met violent deaths.

So there is danger out there, but I continue to maintain it’s minimal if you do things right. Certainly the group I traveled with in the spring of 2012, gathering background for Supercell, did things right.  They, a commercial storm chasing operation called Silver Lining Tours, put safety first.

Silver Lining’s president, Roger Hill, told me, “I always have an escape route planned.”  In truth, there isn’t a huge advantage in trying to cozy up to twisters.  Usually they’re better viewed from afar, through frameworks that lend perspective to them.  You don’t need to pet a rhino on his horn to see what he looks like.

People chase storms for different reasons.  For some, it’s an adrenaline rush.  For others, it’s experiencing nature’s fury and majesty simultaneously.  For still others, it’s to shoot photographs and videos, or to carry out research.  All, I suspect, have an overarching fascination with weather.

Although the chasers I journeyed with never cornered a twister–or vice versa–it didn’t matter.  I rubbed elbows with pros, watched how they operated and listened to their tales.  And while tornadoes on my trip proved as elusive as Bigfoot, I managed to get up close and personal with quite a few supercells.

I mean–this is coming from a weather geek now–how many people have ever stood directly beneath a supercell aborning and watched it mature?  I did, in a place aptly named Levelland, Texas.  As an aside, let me say it’s so damned flat around Levelland it makes most of Kansas look like Rocky Mountain National Park.

Anyhow, there I was, braced against a stiff inflow wind, bolts of lightning lancing into the ground all around me (see Crispy Critter comment above) and loving every moment of it.

We later pursued the storm, by than a full-blown hail beast, into Lubbock.  All the while I’m thinking, I gotta get this stuff into Supercell.

I did.

Head on over to Amazon and pick up Buzz Bernard’s books, PLAGUE, EYEWALL, and SUPERCELL (out today!!)

Click on the pictures for a link to Amazon!!

A SUSAN STORY

by Judith Arnold

The April Tree’s dedication reads: “For Susan.”

Although Susan and I grew up just a few blocks apart, our town’s school districting assigned us to different schools until fifth grade, when a new school opened and we were both transferred there. That first day of fifth grade, we found each other and bonded like epoxy. We were inseparable.

Susan was a gentle soul. Her voice was soft and lilting, her giggle infectious. She was smart and talented. We both loved to write, and we spent hours upon hours penning short stories about adolescent girls, which we planned to publish in an anthology called Trouble, Trouble, Trouble. Susan was as athletically inept as I was. She loved the Beatles as much as I did. She was amazingly kind.

She was also dying.

In those days, a diagnosis of leukemia was a death sentence. Susan’s parents decided not to tell Susan she had a disease that would kill her; they wanted her to enjoy as normal a life as possible for as long as she could. They asked my parents not to tell me, because if I knew, I would tell Susan. She and I had no secrets. We shared everything.

So Susan and I were told only that she had a blood infection which required regular doctor visits. At the time, I was receiving allergy shots, and I saw

Our sixth grade class photo. Susan and I are both in the second row. Susan is the second from the left, in the red sweater and blue skirt. I’m the second from the right, in the plaid jumper and white blouse.

my doctor about as often as she saw hers. Sometimes she wore a back brace for support, but my father also wore a back brace due to a spinal injury, so I thought nothing of Susan’s brace.

Susan died the summer after sixth grade. A complete shock, her death hurled me into an emotional abyss. Today, I would have been sent to a therapist and dosed with antidepressants, but again, those were different times. I was left to cope with my sorrow on my own.

Because I was a writer, I coped by writing. I wrote wrenching, anguished prose-poems. Bitter, raging diatribes. Bleak, existential parables. Cynical stories bristling with distrust and hostility.

Eventually, I started writing romance novels. I loved creating stories in which I could control the endings in a way I couldn’t control real life. Every now and then, I’d attempt another kind of story—a Susan story—but none of those attempts was worth preserving.

A few years ago, I decided to try again, and I wound up writing The April Tree. I created three heroines who lose their best friend, April. Each of those heroines reflects a part of me. Becky is rational, determined to make sense of an incomprehensible universe yet taking comfort in quirky rituals. Like Becky, I think logically while clinging to my own superstitious rituals. Elyse draws portraits which always contain a bit of April in them, just as all my books contain a bit of Susan. Florie wants simple answers to complex questions. Unlike her, I usually can’t accept those simple answers, but I yearn for them as strongly as she does.

Having written nearly ninety romance novels, I knew The April Tree needed something more, something real life often fails to provide: a hopeful ending. So I created a fourth character, Mark, who plunges into despair after April’s death, just as I did after Susan’s death. Mark needs saving, and April’s friends set out to save him. They believe they can overcome the pain of April’s death by redeeming someone else’s life.

Click to preview!

At the end of The April Tree, new grass sprouts in a place where Becky hadn’t expected anything to grow. One thing I learned from Susan is that while loss and grief may scar us, we can still celebrate life, finding joy in the soft, sweet green of new grass. Another thing I learned from Susan is that no one is ever really gone as long as her memory lives on in those who love her. Susan still lives in my heart and in my books—especially in The April Tree.

This month only, THE APRIL TREE by USA Today bestselling author Judith Arnold is only $1.99! 

ZOMBIE SURVIVAL

by Howard Odentz

Bell Bridge Books is proud to present debut author Howard Odentz!

Zombies are a big part of my life. Who’s interested in the fact I raise little goats?

Sure, I live on a small farm in Massachusetts where I have a herd of Nigerian Dwarfs, a couple llamas, a flock of chickens, my attack cat, Severus, and my incredibly intelligent West Highland Terrier, Einstein, but honestly, everything about my life is all about the walking dead.

Seriously, what if the zombie apocalypse really does happen?  Thanks to Tractor Supply, I’ve got a sturdy fence—good for keeping

Wickham, Howard's llama

animals in—awesome for keeping zombies out.  I’ve got a steady supply of milk from the goats. Of course my hands will probably cramp up from squeezing those teeny-weenie udders, but if I can make cheese and yogurt, I’m willing to risk a few calloused palms.

The eggs? As long as my girls are happy, I’ll get a dozen a day.

Then there’re the llamas. All they really do is keep the lawn down and poop, but that’s premium poo we’re talking about. The garden grows really well here.

Oh yeah, after getting all gross and sweaty from working on the farm, I can even take a shower with my own well water and my home-made soap.

So, you see, with all the hobbies going on, I’ll be pretty safe when the zombies come knocking at my door up here in Western Mass.  As a matter fact, I can probably make goat milk cheese and veggie quiche, sit on the deck and laugh.

Try and get me, you creepy dead things—just try.

Carnival, Howard's Goat

Did I forget to mention that if I’m bored while the zombies are storming my stronghold, I can keep myself entertained by singing songs from the few full-length musicals I’ve written and produced around the country?

Yeah, I know—I’ll l eventually get tired of belting out the same old tunes, but by then, I’ll have bigger fish to fry.

The UFOs will probably be buzzing the goat pens and that Bigfoot in the woods out behind the llama field will be eyeing my fattest buck, Rebuttal.

Paws off, fella—he’s mine.

(Howard Odentz is not crazy. Honest. All his doctors say so.)

To learn more about Howard’s survivors of necropoxy, visit his blog: http://howardodentz.com/index.html

Get your copy of DEAD (A LOT) today!

Click the cover for a preview!

WHAT IF

by Susan Kearney

Where Do You Get Your Ideas? Is the question I’m asked most frequently.

OK, I’m going to admit a secret. I don’t think of myself as a writer.  Writing was that hard boring stuff with commas and grammar that I was supposed to learn in school. But story telling?  Ah, that’s where the fun is.

My process for creating a story always seems to start with a “What if.”  For example, when I read the headline in my newspaper, Woman To Direct Secret Service, I started playing What if?  What if a woman took a bullet to save the President?

What if aliens saved the secret service agent?

And what if the alien who saved her was a sexy warrior from another world?  Now ever since I first saw Star Trek  I’ve always had a thing for sexy men in sleek space ships.  So I thought what if the man had to train the woman for an alien challenge?

OK.  So my imagination tends to go where others may not have gone before.  However, once I put my hero and heroines in space, I get to create entire new worlds.  But as a lazy writer, I tend to avoid the parts I don’t enjoy—like describing clothing. Hence, I made suits for my characters to wear that they can alter with a mere thought.

See, all this is fun.  And think about all the things one can do if the suits nullify gravity.  TheKamaSutra would need re-writing.  At least need more pictures, right?

That’s kind of how my mind works, one idea leads to another

Okay, so now I have built a world from playing What If.  What if the alien and the earthling fall in love?  Conflict is good, without it life is boring.  So mix in a common enemy—just to complicate my characters lives.  And then what if my hero can either save his home world or the woman he loves?

So my process to write a story is to play “What if.”  I don’t censor my thoughts.  I don’t say -–oh that’s too strange—-I leave that to reviewers. J

And I adore readers who leave reviews of my books all over the Internet. It’s especially fun to hear how excited readers are about the re-release of The Rystani Warrior series in e-books and print.

Coming late June 2013

THE CHALLENGE is out now. THE DARE, THE ULTIMATUM and THE QUEST will be out soon.  These stories can each stand alone, but I think they are best when read from first to last. Yes, the stories are hot and sexy.  Yes, there are moral and ethical dilemmas.  But the stories are about how my characters react to all the problems I throw at them. It just comes down to telling a story. And the first person I have to entertain is myself.

All right.  You get the idea.  It would be even better if you get the books.

Susan Kearney is the USA Today Bestselling Author of The Rystani Warrior Series. Get THE CHALLENGE (Book 1) today at Amazon Kindle for ONLY $4.79! Look for THE DARE in late June 2013. THE ULTIMATUM and THE QUEST (Books 3 and 4) to follow.

PUNDITRY OVER PERFUNCTORY

by Deborah Smith

I Eat, Therefore I Yam.

The Lard Cooks In Mysterious Ways

I’m Not A Biscuit, Don’t Butter Me Up.

I love slogans and sayings. For one thing, they turn words into a toy box full of colorful blocks, sort of an old-school Rubik’s Cube, and it’s fun to arrange the blocks until CLICK, you’ve figured out the angles and discovered some nifty patterns. But also, pedestrian though they may often be, slogans and sayings often contain serious kernels of truth. They’re one-line poems. Haiku for the half-hearted. Shortcuts to Deep Thought.

But they touch us. The three above are from The Crossroads Café and its spin-off novellas—The Biscuit Witch (now published) and The Pickle Queen (coming in August.) By the time I get to the third novella in the trilogy, The Kitchen Charmer (this fall,) I’ll have more pithy perceptive packets of punditry  than a politician in a pickle.

Ah, alliteration. I love you.

Since discovering the world of Pinterest, where EVERYTHING EVER THOUGHT OF is posted with links to the source material, I’ve begun collecting memorable, witty or simply silly words to live by. Or, at least, to laugh by.

Here are some of my favorites, all of which are inspirational, particularly when it comes to writing a novel:

“She loved mysteries so much that she became one.” (Literatureismyutopia.tumblr.com)

“Sometimes you miss the memories, not the person.” (sayingimages.com)

“I’m not telling you it’s going to be easy, I’m telling you it’s going to be worth it.” (Unknown)

“The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.” (Sylvia Plath)

“When I first met her I knew in a moment I would have to spend the next few days re-arranging my mind so there’d be room for her to stay.” (F. Scott Fitzgerald in The Great Gatsby.)

“Reading is the creative center of a writer’s life.” (Stephen King.)

“There are certain fiction character’s deaths you will never recover from. Ever.”

(problemsofabooknerd.tumblr.com)

“If I waited for perfection, I would never write a word.” (Margaret Atwood.)

“Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader—not the fact that it is raining, but the feeling of being rained upon.” (E.L. Doctorow)

“At any given moment you have the power to say: This is not how the story is going to end.” (artistlaraharris.tumblr.com)

“Forget all the reasons why it won’t work and believe the one reason why it will.” (Unknown.)

And last but not least, a TRULY IMPORTANT saying inspired by Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, as contributed by redbubble.com:

“Marry the beast. Get that library.”

Yours in pithy profundity … Debs

Today is the LAST day to get NY Times bestselling author Deborah Smith’s THE CROSSROADS CAFE for only $1.99 at Amazon Kindle!

RESEARCH OBSESSION? ANYONE?

By Patricia McLinn

I’m a research junkie.  Love it. Especially when the research takes me back to Wyoming, as it did last week.

It was a delight to revisit the landscape and people that Elizabeth “E.M.” Danniher discovers in SIGN OFF, Book 1 in the “Caught Dead in Wyoming” series, when she’s dropped from her top-notch TV news job in New York into rustic Sherman, Wyoming. Newly divorced, newly arrived in Wyoming, she’s not sure where she’s going – or wants to go – in her career or her life. But she’s determined to find out. … As well as figuring out whodunit when dead bodies cross her path.

Like Elizabeth, I arrived in Wyoming for the first time with no idea where I was going. A decade and a half ago, I had a free airline ticket that I had paid for dearly in inconvenience. I decided to go somewhere I’d never been before and that was expensive to fly to <eg>. I ended up in Sheridan, Wyo., rented a car and took off around the state.

It was fascinating. New and varied worlds at almost every turn.  I heard a western meadowlark for the first time, saw big horn sheep, buffalo, the Big Horn Mountains, the Rockies, vistas that brought tears to my eyes, Yellowstone Park … and met some people that brought tears to my eyes from laughing at their dry humor.  It was a terrific trip, and the first of many. I was hooked.

Now, you might think this obsession with Wyoming is strange for an Illinois native, but I swear I have mountains somewhere back in my blood, because I have this strong affinity with the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, as well as the Big Horns and Rockies of Wyoming. It feels like I can breathe deeper there.

(But Wyoming’s mountains have another advantage: They’re dry.  Plus, it’s windy, so it’s like living in one of those shampoo commercials where your hair is never frizzing and forever streaming behind you … except, of course, for when it blows in your face. If I’d known Wyoming could do that for my hair, I would have run away to the Big Horns as a teenager for sure!)

On this latest trip, I spent lots of time on a friend’s ranch, seeing newly born calves and their mommas. On my second trip (to see older calves and heifers moved to grazing land using pickup, horse and dogs to track them as they moved along) I was grateful for improved cell coverage … receiving a phone call from my friend, who said, “Just saw your car drive past the turnoff.”  Oops.

I’ve done that a few times in Wyoming, including one memorable occasion when I was tracking wagon ruts of a trail from the 1860s and ended up in a rancher’s pasture. Fortunately, he was unperturbed. Did I mention it was nearly dark and I was low on gas? Hmm, I wonder if Elizabeth could have a similar adventure … This trip included a few times when I wasn’t sure where I was, but with the mountains to my west I could figure I was heading in the right general direction and I didn’t even make any accidental pasture visits.

For sure, Elizabeth will be visiting King’s Saddlery/King Ropes [[http://www.kingropes.com/index.htm]]  in Sheridan, as I did this trip. And she’s going to receive an education on ropes as I did from Dan Morales, who generously shared just a bit of his vast knowledge of ropes and ropemaking with me. But I can’t tell you any more about that until you read LEFT HANGING, the second book in the “Caught Dead in Wyoming” series, which will be out at the end of June.

I also visited the wonderful Bradford Brinton Museum [[http://www.bbmandm.org]]  having a wonderful times wandering the grounds – I want this house! – as well as talking with an intern who gave me some great ideas and contacts I need for the third book in the series (no title yet) that I’m working on now.

So, now it’s time to unpack the rope I bought at King’s, the bowl I got at Piney Creek Pottery, the wildflower seeds from Brinton Museum and all the memories, while I get busy revisiting Wyoming through Elizabeth’s eyes in “Caught Dead in Wyoming” – hope you’ll come along with Elizabeth and me to see this fascinating place.

 Through tomorrow, SIGN OFF, Book 1 in the Caught Dead in Wyoming Series is ONLY $1.99 at Amazon Kindle!